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The Energy Blog is where all topics relating to The Energy Revolution are presented. Increasingly, expensive oil, coal and global warming are causing an energy revolution by requiring fossil fuels to be supplemented by alternative energy sources and by requiring changes in lifestyle. Please contact me with your comments and questions. Further Information about me can be found HERE.

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December 02, 2006

APS, Greenfuel win Award for Emissions Energy Project of the Year

Arizona Public Service Company and its partner GreenFuel Technologies were recognized with the Emissions Energy Project of the Year award at the 8th Annual Platts Global Energy Awards held Thursday night in New York. GreenFuel’s Emissions-to-Biofuels™ technology uses an algae bioreactor system connected to the smokestack of APS' Redhawk 1,040 megawatt power to recycle carbon dioxide emissions, thereby reducing the amount of CO2 dispersed into the air, and then converts the algae into renewable biofuels.

The emissions to biofuels project addresses two important issues in the U.S. today — reducing greenhouse gas emissions at power plants and producing more domestic sources of alternative fuels for automobiles and power plants. Theoretically, this is the first step in creating a self-sustaining renewable energy system for producing electricity.

At Redhawk, the CO2 emissions are trapped and transferred to specialized containers, shown above, holding algae. In the presence of sunlight, the algae consume the CO2 and multiply. Once enough algae is grown, it is harvested, and its starches are turned into ethanol; its lipids into biodiesel; and its protein into high-grade food for livestock or returned to the algae farm as nutrients. It is estimated that for every acre of algae grown on the plant site, up to 150 tons of CO2 can be absorbed — the greatest ever achieved outside of a laboratory.

"This is the first time ever that algae biomass created on-site by direct connection to a commercial power plant has been successfully converted to both these biofuels," said Isaac Berzin, GreenFuel's founder and Chief Technology Officer. "The conversion and certification of the fuels were conducted by respected, independent laboratories."

“We estimate that this process can absorb as much as 80 percent ofCO2emissions during the daytime at a natural gas fired power plant,” said GreenFuel CEO Cary Bullock.

The next phase of study is the construction of an Engineering Scale Unit that will be completed in first quarter of 2007. Construction is about to begin on a series of greenhouselike buildings which will total 30 feet wide by 500 feet long next to the Redhawk station. The algae will be grown at the floor level of the structures, Bullock said.

Unlike CO2 for EOR or sequestration, there are no limitations on the markets for biofuels, and no additional infrastructure requirements to integrate them into the existing transportation markets.

A more detailed description of the bioreactor process is: Flue gas or other CO2-rich gas streams are introduced to the bioreactor, in which algae are suspended in a media with nutrients added to optimize the growth rate. A portion of the media is withdrawn continuously from the bioreactor and sent to dewatering to harvest the algae. The dewatering operation uses two stages of conventional processing. Primary dewatering increases the algae concentration by a factor of 10-30. Secondary dewatering further increases the algal solids concentration to yield a cake suitable for downstream processing. Water removed from the dewatering steps is returned to the bioreactor, with a small purge stream to prevent precipitation of salts. Make-up water is added to maintain the media volume. A blower pulls the flue gas through the bioreactor. Using an induced draft fan provides several operating advantages, including ensuring minimal disruption to power plant operations, simplifying retrofits to existing facilities. (more details about their process can be found here)

The process steps from the flue gas inlet through end of dewatering comprise the "front end" of the GFT process. The unit operations for algal oil extraction and conversion of the dewatered algae into final fuel products is the "downstream processing" portion of the flow sheet. In contrast to the front-end unit operations, the downstream processes are conventional technologies currently practiced on a large scale, e.g. biodiesel is currently produced from vegetable oils via transesterification (several algae species have lipids, starch, and protein compositions similar to soy and canola beans). Consequently the same facilities can be adapted to produce biodiesel from algae and conventional agricultural feeds.

According to GreenFuel other possible downstream processes include fermentation into ethanol, anerobic digestion to produce methanol, gasification to produce hydrogen or synthesis gas and drying to produce a solid biomass.

So far this is the most hopeful way to greatly minimize the rate of global warming and the energy problem. However, I wonder why they do not store the CO2 produced in the nights and feed those CO2 to more algae during daytime. The additional requirement is just the storage system for about 12 hours CO2 generation and more land for larger algae farm.

That's right poet, but biomass ought to come from manure and other waste, not fuel farmed cellulose or wood products. Biogas runs a fuel cell/turbine power plant at 75% efficiency.

By stopping nitrogen runnoff from waste treatment plants and farms a huge amount of methane now released by runnoff combining with sediment in lakes, rivers, and wetlands could be halted. And methane is 20 times worse on our climate problem than cO2.

No extra land is needed, these solar/algae systems can be mounted on roofs and over parking lots and highways.

Actually the cO2 can still be concentrated in the water algae mixture for storage during night time. By compressing it in tank that sprays a mist through the compressed gases. In a similar process to the way soft drinks are carbonated.

For this small-scale demonstration, which uses only a fraction of the associated power plant's daytime emissions, there is no point in storing nighttime CO2 output: presumably the bioreactors can already get all the CO2 they can usefully handle.

Ive followed this for a while as well, but it seems to me that while it is great for reducing pollution it doesnt actually reduce green house gases as the c02 is released when the ethanol or diesel are burned later on.

petr, if it uses up CO2 from either the atmosphere or from power plant emissions then it is reducing CO2 overall. If its from the atmosphere then its providing transport fuel that is CO2 neutral. If its from power plant emissions then using it reduces the amount of liquid fossil fuel that would have been required in its place.

To amagingdrx,
How can algae/solar system be mounted on roofs etc? It requires CO2 enriched flue gas, right? Down stream processes to convert biomass into ethanol and bio-diesel are also needed.
To Cyrus,
Thanks. Hopefully seccessful full-scaled bio-reactor/power-plant can be built asap.

Im sorry, I dont get your point Marcus.
Unless you bury or dump the algae into the deep ocean, the co2 from the coal burning process will be released when the diesel or ethanol from the algae is burned. I understand you get extra (secondary solar) energy out of the process which is good. But it is not c02 neutral.

Well petr the CO2 in the biodiesel is lost. But the other half of the algae is cellulose, which can be recycled back through the fuel cell. That cO2 is recycled back through the algae.

I have two ideas to reduce and offset the biodiesel emissions. Use the biodisel in hybrid plugin cars with fuel cell/microturbine backup generation. They average 1/10nth the cO2 emission of a conventional vehicle.

To offset this much lower release of GHG, biogas digestors running on manure and other high nitrogen waste that normally pollutes wetlands, prevent much larger releases of methane caused by the nitrogen pollution.

These methane emissions are 20 times more severe in terms of global climate change than CO2 per volume.

The collectors only expose the algae slurry to light Chin, that can be done with trough collectors and clear pipes. All the other processes, gas exchange, biodigestion, and fuel separation can be done at a central facility. The algae growing slurry only needs to circulate in the collectors when solar energy is available.

What's missing in the comments is the unregulated payback or lack of it on this additional infrastrure or any specualation as to what it is in meaningful metrics.

Because there is already algae availabe for harvest. Go after it first, farm more of it deliberately for how much? Are there no semiactive volcanoes with co2 in immmensie quantities to serve the algae market from already?

This is a scam, the numbers don't work. 150tCO2/acre is a very optimistic scenario and will still get you nowhere. Just building a hothouse costs $100/m2. Imagine what would cost to pave an acre with these babies from the picture, just to capture 150tones of CO2